Kanashibari
by Eternal-Night-Ride
Summary: "Once upon a time, I woke up in a dream. Empty and lonely in a house on an island by the sea." Ben character study done through a dark, unusual journey.


**Kanashibari**

Once upon a time, I woke up in a dream. Empty and lonely in a house on an island by the sea. When I tried to walk out, the things in the sand would rush to me. The sea was never calm, always raging without a storm. But there was a lighthouse a distance away. Another island? Other people?

A girl-doll. I never knew where it came from or what it was for or anything about it. Only that it kept me company. Never a word spoken, just a presence. Helping me every now and again. Elegant movement and a rustle of cloth signified it was there. And then, there was none. Like a shadow at the edge of sight.

The house. The walls that throbbed like a heartbeat and hummed in its whirring machinery. It looked organic and yet dead at the same time. The enclosure that ticked constantly, like a watch. I had the feeling it was keeping me there. Forcing me inside rooms and showing me visions - memories or dreams - of the worst of people. Of death, murder, theft, torture, violation - to burrow in my mind and latch there in its malevolence. Letting me go only after I'd become physically ill in the sight. It always felt like whatever I'd seen had marked a visible stain on my skin.

I had to get out of here.

The lighthouse. Constantly beaming at the top of its icy tower, a brightness that fell on the angry waves that smashed against it. Like a reminder of something else other than the house on the island by the sea. It was my goal. A short term one, at least. Something past the sands and the creatures inside that wanted to kill me. Past the house that wanted to hold me prisoner.

There was a ferry boat. One that went from the island to the lighthouse. It didn't seem to go that far through the sea because of how treacherously dangerous the waters were. It docked every other day. The ferrymen went to the island and to the lighthouse, from shore to shore. As sure as the sun that set everyday on the horizon of the island by the sea.

There was something in there keeping me in place like an invisible resistance far stronger than the pulsating walls of the mechanical house. At first, I thought it was just the need to stay because the surrounding environment was insanely dangerous. Not even one step outside and something in the sand would slither and curl just waiting for the opportunity to pounce on whatever came out of the house.

At the start, I thought it was inconspicuous enough. I wasn't really sure what in the world I was doing there and what purpose it served that I stay in the house on the island by the sea. Then I walked, somewhat disoriented, towards what constituted a hall in that place to find an exit. It wasn't that difficult to find. With my hand feeling up the surface of the walls to keep myself steady, the walls breathed and dripped wet underneath my hand despite the fact that it also felt like cold, unfeeling metal.

Well-lit and dark at the same time, the place seemed to just open its walls to present the exit in a mocking way. As if to dare me to go out. And I did. The light beamed in from the outside and the sand dunes flowed like the waves of the sea. Curling and coiling, the sand twitched and burst into clouds every now and again. My skin jumped a little and my hand instinctively covered my face to prevent the dust from getting into my eyes.

As my foot stepped off the cement of the house, I was greeted by a painful smack right on my torso that sent me careening against the door frame. My body bounced off against the wall and I fell flat on my face, feeling even more light-headed than before. Whatever that thing was started to wrap itself around my body as black dots danced around in the back of my eyelids. For some reason, I decided to just bite and struggle as hard as I could as pure self-preservation instinct kicked in. I wasn't completely aware of my actions but soon enough I was dropped instead of being pulled farther into the sand where the thing was.

Scrambling to my feet, I rolled myself into the front porch and into the hallway of the house, where I decided it was safe enough to collapse.

I was in a different section of the house when I woke up. Opening my eyes, I looked up at the ceiling groggily and felt this distinct feeling of being upside-down and topsy-turvy. Like I was on the wrong way around. There was a light fixture up there, barely illuminating the strange interiors of the mechanical house. Something was up with my feeling of balance.

Sitting up, I inspected the house. Inside my head, there was equal parts resentment and a strange automatic reference to the place as home. This annoyance of the place didn't make sense in the beginning. It was protecting me, considering that thing that tried to kill me before didn't try anymore now that I was inside.

Then it happened.

The entire room felt like it was being seen through some kind of blurry filter. It was like touching something but there was a numbness to it, so you were left with barely feeling the texture. Like hearing a sound from far away, down a tube. There was that strange sensation of falling without moving at all, just that there was a shift of everything else inside my body while I stayed put. Holding on to the wall, I watched the vision envelop my surroundings.

There was a child inside a badly drawn crayon house. The light illuminated him and the pillar kept the place from falling apart. The child was helped whenever he needed something - the light grew brighter so that he could find things if they were lost, and the pillar bent down should the boy need to reach for things he couldn't get because he was too small.

I tilted my head at this strange scene. The more it enfolded around me, the worse my dizziness got. But I was inclined to watch because I couldn't go anywhere else.

After some time, the scenes began to change. The light would suddenly go out while the boy was reading a fairytale about a knight saving a princess. He would cry out but the light would ignore him. The pillar collapsed this one time and the boy couldn't get inside the house. The child, irritated by this, decided to just draw with his crayons something else. Forget the house, he thought. This time, he wanted dragons and spaceships and aliens and explosions. So he drew them. He disappeared into those for a long time but he began to miss his crayon house. When he went back, he thought that there was nothing quite like home. But the light still turned off on him while he was doing something important and the pillar bent for no reason. When he tried to talk to them it was like he was talking to nothing. Curled up into a ball on the corner of the crayon house, the boy asked in the direction of the air for a real home.

Despite the feeling of wanting to hurl at the shaky sensation the vision was leaving on me, I reached out a hand to try and put a hand on the kid's shoulder. Then everything disappeared into darkness and I fell on my face.

My mouth and throat felt horribly dry, like I was going to scratch everything by even trying to breath. Wobbling to a stand, I tried to walk myself out of the room once I could finally see that it was a room. There must be a toilet or a bathroom around here, somewhere where there was a sink, running water and a mirror.

By sheer luck I actually did find a bathroom of some sort. Notable because my sense of direction and equilibrium was shot to hell. Every corner of the house looked the same and there was that constant feeling of walking on the wrong side, like I was upside-down.

The bathroom was hard to place and even harder to stay in. It wasn't that it was badly maintained, but it was strangely dark and uninviting. Then again, the entire house felt dark and uninviting. There was a feeling of oppression that whoever was there wasn't particularly welcome. Or maybe it was just me that wasn't welcome. Not that I was welcome outside of the house either. The bathroom looked like it was looming at me though.

I really had no idea where the heightened sense of paranoia was coming from but it just happened at some point in my stay here. The knowledge of the place was even harder to determine the source. But all of this happened just like that.

When I finally looked at myself in the mirror, I looked oddly pale. Paler than usual anyway. Laughing at my reflection, I said to it ironically, 'You need to get out more.' Then splashed some water on my face. Pulling my hand downwards, that was when I noticed something strange under my fingers.

I took my hands off my face to see better. In different parts of it - just under the eye, to the side of my nose and on my chin - were bits of skin flaking off. I thought I was pale before. But when I saw this, every bit of blood left on my face drained out.

* * *

><p>Chapter 1: <span>In the Belly of The Beast<span>

Once upon a time, I woke up in a dream. I was in a different room of the house. Blue and green and cold all over. Much more intense than the color of the sea that continued to batter and smash against the island in its constant anger. Metallic sheen everywhere. A reminder that, even if it looked a little more pleasant than the obvious, this place would look more appropriate with bars and with a lookout tower.

I poked at the rug I was sitting on and it didn't feel right. Like something synthetic, or just something that was being felt through some kind of resistance. Not that I was complaining. Everything there was like that. It was nothing new. I had inspected the house more thoroughly a day before, or may be even far back before that. Something about this place made it really hard to tell that time was passing by.

A long time ago, I heard of this thing where people describe time happening where a moment felt like an eternity and the eternity passed in a moment. This was the first time I actually understood that. Usually I'm the sort of person who didn't sit around letting myself get bored. Unless I was at school. But there was nothing to do here other than look around and poke at things, which I already did enough of some other time before.

For the most part, things happened to me rather than me actively looking for a way to occupy my time.

When I noted that there was actually a harbor on the island, it didn't feel surprising. It should've been. I was alone here the entire time, simmering in my own juices wondering what in the world was going on. Time and time again, I'd find out something and it feels like I've known it for a long time. The new aim was to think up of a way to head over to the passing ferry that dropped on the harbor without being summarily killed by the things in the sand.

The lighthouse that occasionally shone towards the house didn't surprise me either, but I knew it was where I needed to go. Its flash of white through the window seemed so intensely bright that I guess it made some sense that it was easy to know that the lighthouse existed. There must be someone to call for help and direction when I got there. Maybe I'd understand more if I was actually speaking with someone.

That was when I met the girl-doll.

Another trip down the lanes of the house seemed important to look for clues on how to get out safely. So I looked around, trying to keep my feet down on the floor because of this feeling of being inverted that never seemed to go away. Planting my feet squarely on the ground, I watched the strange lines on the floor snake without pattern. They seemed to move when I wasn't looking, because they never looked the same each time I glanced downwards.

The rooms were strangely all open, unlike before. Not that I couldn't go inside them but they were usually shut until I turned the door knob and pushed. There were curtains in that particular hallway. At least, I thought they were curtains. Flimsy light fabric that was almost see-through, but not quite, floated in the light sea breeze that blew in from the open windows of the mechanical house. Shadows shifted. No sound, like it was all occurring in vacuum.

And there it was. With my hand, I pushed away at the curtains that seemed to have wrapped it up in pink gauze. Unmoving. Must be a mannequin. For what reason would the owner of a house like this need a mannequin for, I wouldn't know.

'Hello,' I greeted jokingly, brushing the short dark hair away from its face. 'Nice to meet you. I'm Ben Tennyson. And I'm really lost. Do you know the way out?'

In unexpected response, the girl-doll shifted its head and looked right at me with dark blank eyes. Since I didn't really think it could move, I freaked out and ran for my life. The whole uncharacteristic heightened paranoia was in full action.

Running away from things seemed to be happening to me a lot lately ever since I got here despite my whole principle of stupidly diving into fights or dangerous situations head on. I didn't know why I was being careful now since it never stopped me before.

Wandering around the house until I got tired and bored, I decided to sit down on one of the hallways that faced this antique cuckoo clock. Looked like something my Aunt Vera would have hanging around her place. It didn't feel completely right, like most of the things inside the mechanical house. One very important problem was that the clock didn't tell the time.

When I woke up in this new room, finally getting used to my shifts in location, the house showed me a nice scenery of a mother taking care of her three children. They played outside and laughed all around me, sound that echoed in the four walls of that room. It was pleasant and sweet, quiet and normal. One night as she gave her children milk, read them a fairytale and tucked them into bed, she made sure they never woke up. One, two, three.

I didn't understand. All I felt was the suffocation and the feeling of nonsense. A nonsense waste of life.

Leaving the room to find something to eat, I strolled to any random direction where my feet led me. Even if I didn't know whether I'd be able to keep my food down, I was still really hungry. The open window showed this deep red light from the outside. Was it sunrise or sunset? It probably didn't matter. I still wouldn't be able to tell what day it was. All I knew was that there was a passage of time and that it was time for me to eat.

There was a table covered in deathly white cloth. A bowl that contained round fruits sat in the middle of said table. The food looked strangely ashy, which I'm not sure if it's an effect of the light from overhead or simply the fruits themselves telling me they weren't edible. Hovering towards the table, I sat gingerly on the seats, which were strangely curled over at the back like tree branches in autumn. The interior of the place was sparse. Clean, but it looked more like a grave than a dinner table.

Plucking one of the fruits, I just randomly chose the pomegranate and hacked into it gracelessly. Red sprayed all over the place, made even more vibrant by the light from the window. No one cared about my table manners around here so I just ate the seeds as messily as it normally was. Surprisingly enough, I kept my food down after what had happened previous. Maybe I was starting to get desensitized.

Tracing my fingers down the walls with the kind of petulant, childish idea of vengeance, I happily messed up the mechanical house with food stains while I thought about my situation. What was I doing here exactly? What was I doing before?

Knitting my eyebrows together, I racked my brain to try and connect some dots that probably weren't even there in the first place. I decided to simplify what I had to answer. What's my last memory? What were the things that I did remember?

I knew my name. The fact that I was sixteen. An only child. I lived in Bellwood. My school was one of the only two local schools in my area - a public school. I hated school. Especially most Math subjects. Schoolwork was just too boring for me. Soccer was a favorite sport though I wasn't too bad at baseball either. My family was, well, my family. They were kind of annoying sometimes, but that went without saying.

Thinking through those, I didn't feel like I was really forgetting anything important. Except for the part where I got stuck in an unusual house in the middle of nowhere.

I had to get out of here.

It was frustrating to think about how much I lacked progress in finding a way to get out. Vehicles would be a good idea so as not to get completely totalled by the things that lived in the sand. So far, I hadn't unearthed a garage around here. For the brief moment I was outside, the place looked far smaller on the outside than it was on the inside. The mechanical house looked like an old cottage house on the front and felt like a castle with many trap doors when actually walking around in it. Either my perception of perspective was just getting screwed up like my sense of balance or this place was just naturally screwed up.

I'd put my bet on the last one.

Turning around, I went back to the dining room to look for a drink. Honestly, this entire thinking thing made me thirsty. When I finally arrived at the dining room, I was taken aback by what I saw.

The place was clean.

It must have been the next day after that when I gave up and decided that talking to myself was a wonderful idea. Nobody would see me do so anyway so why bother trying to pretend that my sanity was still intact?

'I think as long as you can dream outside of this place, you can get out. It's what I'm planning to do. I'm not just gonna give up because I can't find anything right now. Watch me, I'll get out of here.'

Lying on my back, I dug myself farther into the couch that I was lounging on. It felt strange, like it was moving because it was breathing. But I didn't care and just kept on talking.

'I'm thinking about the lighthouse.' Not just today, but every time it ever crossed my mind or looked out of the window. It was an aim that I was just impatient to get to. 'I wonder what the ferrymen are like. I hope they have smoothies. Or at least know a place where I can get some. When you're marooned on a desert island, you really miss the little things in life.'

The shadows changed. An extra one added to the existing darkness in that room. Unperturbed, I lazily nudged my head a little to peek at what moved. The girl-doll stood at the foot of the couch in elegant layers of cloth. Blank faced. Beautiful in an unassuming way; pleasant enough to look at but simple enough to be forgotten. I looked at it curiously, wondering how long it had been standing there. I kept on forgetting that it was in the house.

Sitting up warily, I drew a little closer to where it was. 'Um, hello?' I greeted uncertainly. I didn't really know what to make of it, how I was supposed to interact with it. The fact that I knew that it was called a girl-doll was still odd and a little freaky.

Pieces of cloth ruffled when the girl-doll moved, its hands raised up as if to give me something that it was holding. In the middle of its palm was a key. There was never a key in the house. It opened doors when it wanted and locked them whenever was most inconvenient. Or I was free to go outside but I wouldn't be protected by it if I did. So what the key was for, I never got.

I took what it offered anyway. 'Thank you.'

With that, the girl-doll walked away as quietly as it arrived.

After many days of nothing and nonsense, I stumbled into a garage one day. I'd speculate that the house was keeping things from me for a laugh but that I'd have to make the assumption that I was staying inside something that was alive. Too jaded for thinking, I just celebrated that idea that there was a way out. There was something I can drive. And the key made sense.

The car wasn't useful yet. It was broken down - the only thing in the house without working cold efficient functionality. I wasn't much of a mechanic so I had no idea what to do. There was always another day. I'd think of something.

Something on my skin. It always felt like there was something coated on my skin, like some kind of sticky stain that made the stay on the house even more uncomfortable. This was primarily the reason why I hung around the bathroom more often than I normally would. The feeling would get worse after being exposed to another one of the house's twisted idea of a home movie.

Such as this day. I was trapped in another room in the house, watching a scene of people imprisoning other people for vague foolish reasons that made no sense other than in their own cruel minds. People just didn't like the idea of trying to reach out and understand others. Always different in faces but always the same response. Hatred begot hatred. Fear. Exclusion. Misery. Everyone was just looking for a place to call home. Human nature fostered hatred along with love, destruction in the face of creation, death in response to life. Stagnation from the distrust of change. Because when life was chaotic and didn't make sense, people created faces to blame. The faces changed but everything stayed the same.

All the while, I waited for as long as these same people waited - crumpled, wilted inside the dark dank walls and bars of a world without justice or mercy. Because when one was hurting they felt the need to grab and drag someone else into the fires of hurt just like them. Everyone was just looking for a place to call home. Sometimes, home was an entire world of hurt.

Yet I didn't lose hope. Shivering, hungry, dehydrated and cramped with phantoms, I held hope. Even though for a time I forgot why, it was there. In my pocket, there was a key. At the time it could have been as phantom as the rest of the world around me but it was enough.

When I fell through the door, shaking with thirst and starvation, I landed on something soft and warm. Nothing in that place felt real. So this was unusual. I didn't know how to react other than to hold on tightly and never let go. The subdued smell of something powdery was all around, the fabric was soft and pastel in color, the skin was even softer and smoother.

My eyes opened. And choked on the water that I was being given.

Dark eyes were the first things I saw. The blanket was the first thing I felt. Soft breath, more even than my ragged one, was the first thing I heard. Without further ado, I was left on my own after I was functioning well enough by myself.

I was staring at my reflection on the bathroom mirror from where I was sitting. Wiping away at the cool water that was splashed on my face to help me stay conscious, my hand dragged the peeling skin off. There was more flaking off. And I didn't care. Just to get rid of that other feeling.

That was the day I also spent working on the car until I fell asleep underneath it, the walls of the mechanical house clicking like clockwork, lulling me to sleep.

The world changed around me again. Topsy-turvy. I was in a room that dripped from all sides and beat rhythmically like the ticking of a clock.

Today I watched a fairytale about a young woman and a young man living in a kingdom. She was wide-eyed and pleasant, with a soothing voice and kind demeanor. Support. He was cold and callous, with a commanding tone and overbearing behavior. Leader. One day she began to dream of a world outside the castle, wanting to see what was beyond the horizon. Everyday he worked on his ambitious creations, building without pause. Works that radically changed the world. The young woman wanted something else for herself other than just blindly shadowing the young man. Dreaming. So she pulled at his sleeve to come see the people, bustling as they came from beyond the horizon. She pulled constantly, much to his impatience. He told her to stop; his work was top priority. So she sat down, anxious. Yet she still talked of the world outside.

Until eventually the young man had enough and pushed her down, breaking open her chest to pull her apart. Piece by piece. Delicate hands struggled uselessly under the shredding. Eventually the young man made his greatest creation - a young woman without a voice, without a thought, without a heart. He smiled and went back to work.

Today I also heaved until my stomach was empty.

A ghost hovered around where I curled over at the corner of the bathroom. When I reached out blindly for a towel, it was handed to me. I didn't think much of it. Nor the part where I wiped furiously at my face and my arms, then more skin began to shed off. I was feeling increasingly raw. But I just didn't care.

'There must be something in the water I'm allergic to,' I reminisced out loud in a flat tone. Picking at the flaking skin, I just pulled it off to help it along. 'Or I'm just allergic to boredom. So what else is new?' I must have pulled too far because it suddenly drew blood. 'Huh.' Red started to drip and stain fingermarks all over my cheek. 'Well, that is new. I guess I walked into that one.'

Upon wiping myself clean of the bloodstains with the towel, I commented in the air dryly, 'Maybe I should stop talking. One day, you might actually get creative.' Then I placed down the towel on the tiles surrounding the sink. Turning the tap, it decided not to work today which I feel is actually a deliberate bite back of the house. Annoyed, I snapped at the house, 'What? Did this place suddenly turn into a public toilet?'

Then began to look around pointedly, in the process noticing the three petaled white flower drooping from its stem. Poking at it, I found that it looked like it still had a flower bulb inside.

The shadow on the door moved and elegant brushes of flimsy fabric swished noiselessly as the girl-doll left quietly. Even if I didn't get it, I smiled at her retreating figure. I think she was trying to talk to me.

The car looked menacing when I went back to it the next day. Something in my perception must have changed because it looked more like the house the more it got fixed. Not that I cared too much because it was my ticket out of here. Maybe it didn't have style but at least it had function.

Sitting on the driver's seat, I turned the engine on. Fishing the key out of my pocket, I finally put it to use. Music to my ears when the car revved to life. This was the day I left. Not really sure if it was going to survive the attacking beings in the sand but I was going to push it as far as it could go then run like the wind if it died. My plan was simple enough that it could work.

As the garage door opened, I felt like I was forgetting something. A small hand reached into the window, with a small container dangling from it. I squinted and looked at the quiet girl-doll. Shaking my head, I suddenly remembered there was somebody else who was in this house.

I gently coaxed the girl-doll to come inside. There was no resistance. The girl-doll just sat down inaudibly on the passenger seat.

'Nice to see you could join me. Wanna go on a road trip?' I said conversationally while I closed the door to the driver's seat and wrapped my hand around the steering wheel. The girl-doll responded by staring sightlessly at the front, the sand dunes making more movement than it did. 'I'll take that as a yes.'

The seat, the wheels, the entire interior felt like this car was made for me. Revving the engine to go felt amazingly exhilarating. I didn't think of myself as much of a car-person. But when the car ran over the slinking things in the sand and there were crunching noises and other sounds that indicated

pain, I knew I was at least a car-person for this particular one.

Adrenaline ran through my veins when I realized this car could just total these things with no problem. The creatures in the sand didn't seem to know that it was there or at least couldn't find it. When the things attacked, they did so blindly. It was easy enough to just run them over. After being forced to cower from those things for so long, it was exciting to think that I had the upper hand now that I was in this car. I had to congratulate myself and give a verbal pat on the back for a job well-done for finally managing to achieve what I've been planning these past few - who knows how long.

'Look at me go!' I laughed, patting the steering wheel. 'You and I make a great team, don't you think?' Pressing harder on the accelerator, the sound of the engine when it sped down the dunes was almost positively animalistic - like a growl. Under the wheels, there was another long-drawn out crack and a barely audible thump on the side from the thing I ran over. Grinning from ear to ear, I said, 'I'll take that as a yes.'

A little distance off was the sea. The drive was short enough that I felt like the view from the house to the harbor actually seemed distorted, the house made it seem much farther than it really was. Upon that revelation I would have been too busy hating the house if I was still stuck there, but I wasn't. Instead, I was just happy about my joy-ride.

Eventually I slowed the car down to a stop, just in front of the ferrymen that were loading cargo onto their boat by pushing them up a massive wooden plank.

Now that I saw the ferry up close, I realized it was a ship and not a boat. Obviously, I had no sense of scale. Also I was into sci-fi, so that probably would explain everything. I could use the house as a scapegoat but I'm thinking that it's probably had enough flack. Besides, I was feeling good today.

The ferrymen. Textured like tree bark but still somehow able to move as smoothly as people with actual flesh and blood as their parts. Strangely enough, I just took this in stride. Like seeing tree people managing a boat was normal.

The ferrymen walked down the ship in coordination, taking cargo carefully one at a time onboard. The captain noticed me while I poked my head out of the car window. He perked up in alert, as if I was somehow familiar to him. Nudging his head to the ship, he pretty much welcomed me aboard without any words needing to be spoken.

Just in case, I requested to have the car brought into the ship. Surprisingly, the crew didn't particularly mind that I was doing such a big ask and simply went on to work. I went in as the ferrymen finished placing their cargo into the hold. All the while, my shadow followed just behind me.

The ferry was already travelling by the time I decided to speak with someone. The crew were relatively nice enough to start speaking with, when they weren't busy and bothering them from their work. Or otherwise just naturally easy to piss off.

'What are you lookin' at?' one of the ferrymen snapped at me while I was watching them go about their business. Said ferryman was immediately smacked in the arm by the person accompanying him.

'Oh, leave him alone. Don't start anything right now. You're always starting something,' said company berated, fists on hips in aggravation.

To which the first ferryman just rubbed at his arm defensively and complained, 'What?'

Maybe I should've brought popcorn along with the car. That would've been useful right now. And a couch.

The captain came into the picture and told off both of them, 'Can't the two of you just get back to work? I can't babysit you all day. I have more important things to do.' The captain started rubbing his forehead in irritation, as if this was just a regular occurrence around here. The two continued to fight all the way down to the hull, much to my continued amusement. The captain looked at me apologetically. 'They're always like that. Just have to put up with it. You always do with family.'

'They're relatives?' I asked. Despite their composition, they didn't really look very similar so I trusted my instincts telling me they didn't look like family.

'Everyone working on my ship is family to me,' he responded in this resigned fondness that seemed awfully familiar to me.

'I get that,' I responded mysteriously. At least, mysterious to myself. I wasn't quite sure what I was talking about but I felt inclined to say it. Maybe I was just being conversational. I haven't had an appropriate conversation in a long time.

'Where are you headed?' the captain asked, shifting his head in a way that the bark that made up his skin started to crunch more audibly. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

'The lighthouse,' I remarked simply, looking out to see its intense beam of light just pass through the glass window of the control room.

'Visiting family?' he asked curiously.

I responded, 'Not really. More like looking for them.'

There was just this sound that said he was responding, but not really expressing anything definitive. But I did detect a bit of confusion there. Like I must have said something that didn't quite match up to him. This still coincided with that idea that he seemed to recognize me from earlier. But now, it was like he wasn't quite so sure. I was thinking of asking but there was an interruption.

Two ferrymen arrived on the deck to have a short conversation with the captain about the state of their travel. The sea continued to throw the ship around like a rag doll but the ship was curiously sturdy enough to take this assault with no damage. I looked out of the window, fixing my stare on the white structure ahead.

'You're falling to pieces,' someone behind me said.

I turned around. One of the ferrymen, the quieter, somewhat shier one was the one who spoke in concern. From whatever reflection I could spot on the glass, my skin continued to shred. Smiling jadedly, I just picked at the flaps that stuck out from my skin. The ones on my arms were also growing worse.

'I'm fine,' I responded reassuringly. 'Maybe I'm just part-snake.'

The other one spoke up, as if to just change the subject to something a little less morbid as my skin peeling off, 'Did you need any of the things you wanted sent off to the house?' He turned to the other crew member he was with. 'Maybe we should've kept the equipment here. I didn't know he was going to be here instead.' The other one shrugged.

I knitted my eyebrows. 'I didn't… Look, this is the first time I've ever talked to you guys.'

'I don't think he's the man in red,' the captain intruded, steering the helm adeptly through the massive waves that were shifting the ship practically to its side.

'Who?' I grew increasingly more confused.

'The owner of the house in the island,' the taller one stated matter of factly, then he grew just as confused as I was when he continued to speak. 'Didn't you come from there?'

'Yeah, but I don't know how I got there. And I definitely don't live there. I'm just trying to find my way back home.' My voice just started to get softer the more I spoke, as if those things were more my thoughts rather than something I wanted to say out loud. 'All I know is that I need to get to the lighthouse. Even then I don't know why. I'm just so confused.' Placing my head in my hands, I squeezed my eyes shut.

'You must want to speak with the lady of the light,' the ferryman said wistfully.

'The lady of the light?' I repeated incredulously, as if this was the perfect opportunity to be amused at something like that. 'Sounds too long. Maybe we can just abbreviate it to ell-oh-ell?'

Everyone in the deck looked confused at what I just said. Shoulders drooped, I sighed and just waved my hand to signify to everyone to forget what I just said.

'The lady of the light can definitely help you,' he continued to speak, voice sounding reverent towards the person he was telling me about. 'She's very smart and powerful. A lost soul, just like you. But she'll have the means and the directions to go to the golden city.'

'What's at that city?'

'Hope,' he responded simply, with a smile that could barely be seen from the textured bark. Regardless, his voice contained that smile.

I nodded minutely, trying to take everything in. There seemed to be a much larger world that I haven't seen here. At least not from the confines of the house.

The captain immediately redirected his ferrymen back to their stations, simply reminding them to help navigate and manage the ship so that it never has to pass by the ice siren.

This barely registered to me. There was a new objective in my list. Today, I planned to head towards the golden city.

Far enough away was a blazing lighthouse. Colder and colder was its beam when drawing closer to it, as if it blistered in its own frozen rage. The lady of the light sat in her tower high above the seas, as bright as a star brought down to earth. Behind the icebergs and rocks that littered the turbulent seas lived a mysterious ice siren that sea-farers dreaded. As beautiful and tumultuous as the sea she called home. And a man in red that lived in a house on an island by the sea.

The ferry traveled on. Once upon a time, I woke up in a dream.

* * *

><p>AN:

_Time flows_

_Nobody knows_

_The years go by_

_Where we go _

_Alone from here _

_Night falls_

_Strange-colored walls_

_My eyes deceive_

_What is wrong_

_With me?_

_Deep in the night you think everything's right_

_Tell it to yourself:_

_Say it's just a nightmare_

_Something is telling you nothing can change where you are _

_Again_

-"Acceptance"

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories soundtrack

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn


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